Taiwan Taipei Mission

Taiwan Taipei Mission

Monday, October 12, 2015

General Conference Challenges

Family and Friends!

What
a great week this has been! I LOVED General Conference--so uplifting
and I learned so much from each speaker! What a blessing it is that we
have a living prophet and apostles to lead and guide our church. How
neat it is we now have three new ordained apostles to also teach, lead,
and guide us.

As for this week, our investigators we are
really focusing on are continuing to progress. We visit a less active
who is almost fully back to activity and her nonmember daughter-in-law
quite frequently and they are both really progressing. 巴永, the daughter
in law, is slowly progressing and has a baptismal date for the end of
this month. She has the desire but for her to read and pray on her own
is really hard. She feels like it is something she can only do when the
missionaries are in a lesson with her. :( As we continue to teach her
and help her come to know Christ, I hope and pray she can learn the
importance of personal communication with our Heavenly Father.

We
also had a great lesson with 王志文 this week. We are now teaching him the
commandments and taught Word of Wisdom this week. In Taiwan, it is
pretty common for everyone to drink tea and coffee--especially
tea--there is so many different varieties here--and so that is his only
concern. At first, he was really nervous about having to give up tea but
towards the end of the lesson he said something really neat. He said,
"Since this is a commandment from Heavenly Father, I know I need to obey
it." What a wonderful man of faith. He has still yet to come to
church--mostly concerning his work. He drives a car for a man who lives up
in one of the mountainous tribes--ZhuoXi--were we go pretty
frequently--and his schedule is never set in stone. :(

冒姐妹 is
someone we are also working really close towards. This last week she
brought up a big concern here--regarding worshiping. She asked what the
conflict was between being baptized and continuing to worship other
Gods. During this lesson with her, I could feel the Spirit really
strong. I know that through the Spirit, Sister Coleman and I were able
to bear powerful testimony and promise her that as she would continue to
pray daily, read daily, and attend church every Sunday that this
concern of hers would diminish and she would not have the desire to
worship other Gods anymore. I know the Spirit bore powerful testimony
to her.
冒姐妹 is like my Taiwanese mom. We get along so great and I can
laugh so hard with her! I love her to death and I am so grateful for
this opportunity Heavenly Father has given me to help her come unto
Christ.

On Friday, we were up in the mountains doing some
finding and visiting some investigators in ZhuoXi--the ZhongZheng Tribe.
(Dad, this is one of the mountainous tribes--and you were right, these
people up here are absolutely amazing--so humble, so loving). We were
walking
up this pretty steep hill to see if there were any homes up there. We
were up it a few minutes and we could see NO homes. We were about to go
back but decided to
continue walking, just a few moments later we saw a few homes and went
and and talked to them. We saw two miracles right in a row! The first
man, was visiting home from doing his military service up in Taipei and
was only going to be home for a few days. We had a wonderful short
lesson with him, gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon, and recorded his
information to give to the respective missionaries. As we were walking
to the next home, some trees separated and we were able to see the
beautiful view of all the town of YuLi. We stopped to take a picture and
next thing we knew, this man came driving up on his
motor-scooter and tried to speak to us in some broken English.

Us and the view.

We walked to
his home together and
we were able to teach him about Heavenly Father and he became a new
investigator!! First of all, we were pretty excited to meet this new
investigator, Secondly, the VIEW was beautiful!! This man's home was on
the top of the mountain and it overlooked the WHOLE valley. The
pictures we got definitely do not capture the magnificence of it but it
was beautiful. How grateful I am for the beauties of the earth!

Our new investigator we met on the top of the mountain.

We
ended this week with the wonderful opportunity to listen to General
Conference! We watched it with our branch and we used our Branch
President's phone to listen to it in English. So, in one ear we had English and the other ear we were listening to it in Chinese. It was so
great. Sadly, I forgot all my notes I was going to send home sitting on
my desk in our apartment, but I learned SO SO much.

I loved
how so many talks were on the Sabbath Day. This Holy Day is truly so
important. We are given this day to REST, to spend TIME with family, to
STUDY the gospel, and most importantly to ATTEND church. The three hours
we spend at church each week are the most three important hours of our
week. I invite you all to ponder how you can make this time a more
sacred time. Whether it be putting your phone on silent and not using it
or even leaving it at home or in the car, starting to take notes as to
what the Spirit teaches you, or not falling asleep. I know as we focus
more intently and learn more at church our weeks will be filled with
more happiness, our work, homework, and other activities will go more
smoothly, and blessings will fall like rain from Heaven.

I
also loved D. Todd Christofferson's Talk. We go to church to anchor
ourselves in Christ. Our calling on earth is to learn and grow. This
life is NOT easy. We are faced with challenges, trials and temptations
of ALL sorts. But, we are promised from the scriptures we will NEVER be
tempted more than we can bear. Keep working your best, focus on the
important things, and work towards receiving the gift of exaltation and
Salvation!!

Also, mom, you are AMAZING! I LOVE you. This conference made me so grateful for my mom. Mom, your incredible. LOVE YOU

Lastly,
what is your scripture you are going to 'ponderize' this week? (Devin
G. Durrant's Talk from Sunday Afternoon's Session) I want to hear back
from y'all!!

I LOVE you all!! HAVE A GREAT WEEK!!!!!!

Love,

Sister Haacke

Last P-day, we went to SanXianTai again! IT was BEAUTIFUL!

We had a Taiwanese BBQ with our branch this past week.

Me and a friend that our branch president brought.

Saturday was "Taiwan's Birthday" so they had a cute parade all around town for a few hours!

ZONE Training this week!! Sister Lindsay and I are serving in the same ZONE again!!!